This invention has to do with juice extraction equipment of the type including a strainer tube through which fruit pulp is transported during the juicing cycle of the extraction operation. Persons having ordinary skill in the art will recognize this invention as pertaining to the type of juice extractors disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,649,730 to Hait; 3,236,175 to Belk; 4,300,449 to Segredo as well as others. In this type of juice extractor oranges are placed one-by-one between two opposed cups that move toward each other to squeeze the fruit, rupture the skin and direct juice, seeds, pulp and disc-shaped pieces of peel downwardly through a perforated cylindrical finishing tube. As the juice and other material moves downwardly, a plunger moves upwardly to receive the peel segments, seeds and pulp in a central axial passage in the plunger and to force juice laterally through the perforations of the tube into a collection chamber.
More specifically the invention herein entails the use of a fluted column inside the strainer tube of a juice extractor. The fluted column allows the passage of fruit pulp along and through the flutes of the column adjacent to the interior surface of the screen of the strainer tube.
Well known embodiments of juice extractors have an orifice tube carried inside the strainer tube. The orifice tube has an internal longitudinal orifice through which fruit pulp is transported after most of or at least a significant quantity of juice is extracted from the fruit being processed.
The operation of the orifice tube is well known and has been described along with the operation of a conventional juice extractor in several U.S. patents. This invention is very different from those early embodiments however in that the orifice tube is replaced by the fluted column. This is the most significant difference between this invention and the prior art juice extractors.
As mentioned above the present well known juice extractors use an orifice tube. This orifice tube is a tubular structure with an internal longitudinal orifice, or hole. The orifice can be made of varying size to impose different degrees of restriction on the fruit pulp passing through the orifice tube. It is believed that the orifice tube structure works quite well as peel and core material from the fruit are quickly separated from the juice thus yielding a high quality product.
A variant of the prior art orifice tube is the incorporation of a window tube in the top portion of the standard orifice tube. The use of the window tube improves yield--that is the amount of liguid recovered from the fruit--but increases bottom pulp and oil content of the juice. This increase in yield at the expense of higher oil and bottom pulp may be desirable for certain juice products but is generally not the primary goal of juice extraction.
The primary goal, stated very simplistically, is to optimize yield and minimize the oil content of the juice being extracted from a particular fruit.
The fluted column apparatus disclosed herein has the benefit over the prior art of increasing yield over standard components (a standard orifice tube) and at the same time not increasing the bottom pulp or oil content when compared with an orifice tube having the accessory window tube.